The first three months
of 1967 were marked by repeated Syrian artillery bombardments and cross-border
raids on the Israeli settlements in the north. Israeli
air raids against Syrian positions on the Golan Heights would result in a few weeks' quiet, but then the attacks would
begin again. On 7 April 1967 Syrian mortars on the Golan Heights
began a barrage of fire on kibbutz Gadot,
on the Israeli side of the B'not Yaakov bridge. More than 200 shells were fired before Israeli tanks moved into positions
from which they could reach the Syrian mortars.

As the Israeli tanks
opened fire, the Syrian artillery did likewise. Firing quickly spread
along the border to the north and south of Gadot. Then Israeli warplanes - Mirage fighter-bombers purchased from France - flew over the Syrian border and over the Golan Heights, strafing several Syrian strongholds
and artillery batteries. Fifteen
minutes later Syrian warplanes - Soviet MiG­21s - took on the Israeli planes in aerial combat. Within
a few minutes, six MiGs had been shot down and the rest chased eastwards
to Damascus. The citizens of
Damascus could see the Israeli planes between the capital and the snow-capped
peak of Mount Hermon, Syria's highest mountain. One Israeli plane was shot down.

Syria protested that
Israel was preparing for war. In public, the Soviet Union
supported this claim. In private, the Soviet Ambassador in Damascus warned
the Syrians to restrain the Fatah raids into Israel. The Egyptian Prime
Minister, visiting Damascus to boast
of the creation of a common front against `Israeli aggression', likewise warned the
Syrian government not to provoke Israel into going to war. For her part,
Syria complained bitterly to Egypt
that she had not rushed to help her ally, particularly in view of the
Syrian-Egyptian defence pact signed the previous
year. It was the Soviet Union that sought, most publicly, to condemn Israel's
action (or, more properly, her reaction). On April 26 the Soviet Ambassador
in Tel Aviv, Dmitri Chuvakhin, protested to Levi Eshkol
that Israel was indeed planning
a war, telling the Israeli Prime Minister, `We understand that in spite
of all your official statements, there are, in fact, heavy concentrations
of Israeli troops all along the Syrian borders.' Not
only did Eshkol deny the allegation;
he offered to accompany Chuvakhin on a fact-finding trip along the whole Israel-Syrian border. The Ambassador declined.
The Syrians took the Soviet
claim seriously. Following the Gadot clash, Fatah renewed its campaign inside Israel, using
the Syrian border as a conduit.
On April 29 a water pipeline was blown up, and a few days later mines were laid on the main road leading north from
Tiberias, damaging an Israeli army truck.Gradually, during May, President Nasser emerged as a champion of the Syrians - or
rather of the Arab world generally, the leadership of which he so wished to assert. Beginning on May 13, Egyptian
troops moved in large numbers into the Sinai, from which Israel had withdrawn
nine years earlier and which
had been demilitarized as security for Israel after her withdrawal. As
the Egyptian troops moved forward, Cairo Radio set the tone of a propaganda war that became Egypt's daily barrage:
`Egypt, with all its resources,
is ready to plunge into a total war that will be the end of Israel,' the radio declared.Israel then made what has since been judged a psychological mistake. Hoping to assert her peaceful intentions, and to calm
the jittery atmosphere created
by Arab - and Soviet - accusations
of an imminent Israeli attack on Syria, she held her May 15 Independence
Day parade without the usual large numbers
of tanks and heavy artillery. The parade took the form of a night­time
military tattoo held in the stadium of the Hebrew University on Givat
Ram. The full parade was not held because of an agreed
limitation of tanks in Jerusalem,
as laid down in the armistice agreement with Jordan, and because Israel did not wish to exacerbate tension
on the Jordanian front.
Noting the lack of heavy armour, the Egyptians at once accused Israel
of having sent the ‘missing' tanks and other weaponry to the north. Egypt also
named May 17 - a mere two days away - as the day on which Israel would invade Syria.On the following day, May 16, Egypt acted to raise the temperature in the
region still further and to
threaten Israel. That day, at ten in the evening, Nasser ordered the United Nations to remove its
forces from Sinai. Since 1956 a United Nations Emergency Force
(UNEF) of 3,400 men had been stationed in
the Gaza Strip and at Sharm el-Sheikh, at the southern tip of the Sinai
peninsula, with the internationally approved task of monitoring the Egyptian-Israeli cease-fire. It had been able to take
up its monitoring positions on
Egyptian soil only with Egyptian consent. That consent was suddenly withdrawn.Israel expected the United Nations Secretary General, U Thant, to ask at
least for a period of time in
which to delay. The Egyptians themselves expected
that the demand for the withdrawal of the Emergency Force would be
challenged by the Security Council. But U Thant did not even call the
Council. Instead, he accepted Nasser's demand at its
face value and ordered the troops
to pull out at once. The troops began moving within twenty-four hours of Nasser's demand, and on May 19, only three
days after the demand had been
made, the last of the troops sailed away.

Egypt was in total military control of Sinai. Nasser had seen an international organization, hitherto committed to
maintaining the cease-fire, turn tail and run. On May 20 Israeli reserves
- the basis of the citizens'
army - began partial mobilization, leaving their homes and
their workplaces and hastening
to their camps and assembly points. As the bulk of Israel's armed forces
are drawn from the civilian reserve, full mobilization means a virtual
stop to the Israeli economy.

That day, May 20, the Egyptian Minister of War, Field Marshal Abdul Hakim Amer, travelled to Gaza to inspect
the Egyptian troops that had replaced the United Nations contingent. Alongside the
Egyptians were soldiers of the Egyptian-sponsored
Palestinian Liberation Army.

Inside Israel, at the highest level, a fierce debate was taking place.
Senior army officers
and leading politicians argued for a pre-emptive military strike against both Egypt
and Syria. But the Chief of Staff, Yitzhak Rabin, and the Prime Minister,
Levi Eshkol (who was also Minister of Defence), felt that any such action would
be unwise. It was not certain, they argued, that either Damascus or Cairo
was determined on war.

As the crisis intensified,
the Secretary-General of the French Foreign Ministry, Herve Alphand, visited several Arab capitals.
While in Beirut he stated publicly
that there was no contradiction between France's recognition of `Israel's existence' and France's friendship with
the Arab States. Considering
that, eleven years earlier, France had been Israel's active ally and co-belligerent,
and was still its major arms supplier, the relegation of France's commitment to the mere `existence' of Israel
struck a sour note in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

With each day that passed, the
Israeli leaders discussed what they regarded
as the terrible prospect of war. On May 21 the Foreign Minister, Abba
Eban, asked the Chief of Staff, Yitzhak Rabin, what likelihood there was of Egypt trying
to close the Straits of Tiran, and thereby denying Israeli ships access
to the port of Eilat through this international waterway. 'Rabin was very tense,'
Eban later recalled, `chain-smoking all the time. He pointed out that Israel's
military preparedness had always been related to the northern and eastern fronts, with little
attention to the south. When I asked him what the diplomatic establishment could do to help,
he said to me, "Time.
We need time to reinforce the south".'At a meeting of
senior Israeli Cabinet Ministers later that day it was agreed that one indication
of Nasser's true intent would be if he closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli
shipping. But that evening, only an hour after the inner Cabinet agreement
to treat the closure of the Straits as a cause of war, Levi Eshkol spoke over
the radio to the Israeli public, and in a conciliatory speech, stressing Israel's desire
not to go to war, made no mention of the Straits
of Tiran or the blockade or freedom of passage for Israeli ships to Eilat. Nasser read Eshkol's speech and drew what seemed
to him to be the obvious conclusion
- the same conclusion that Syria
had drawn after the artillery
duel at Gadot six weeks earlier - that
Israel was not prepared to go to
war.

During his speech, Eshkol had difficulty deciphering a word in his script.
His stumbled sentence left a terrible impression on his Israeli listeners,
who feared that he
was breaking under the strain. As a result, there was immediate talk of
replacing him as Defence Minister. As Israelis' public confidence in their government
fell, Nasser's confidence rose. On the following day, May 22, he announced
that Egypt was reimposing her blockade of the Straits. He made his announcement
- which
suddenly raised the spectre of war with Israel - at an Egyptian air force
base at Bir Gafgafa, in the Sinai, a hundred miles from Israel's Negev
border.

Abba Eban, who listened to a recording of Nasser's speech an hour later,
described it as offering Israel a choice,
`slow strangulation or rapid, solitary death'. Nasser told his pilots, and the
waiting world:

We are in confrontation
with Israel. In contrast to what happened in 1956 when France and Britain
were at her side, Israel is not supported today by any European power.
It is possible, however, that America may come to her aid.

The
United States supports Israel politically and provides her with arms and military
material. But the world will not accept a repetition of 1956. We are face
to face with Israel. Henceforward the situation is in your hands. Our
armed forces have occupied Sharm el-Sheikh ...
We shall
on no account allow the Israeli flag to pass through the Gulf of Akaba. The Jews threaten to make war. I reply: 'Ahlan
wa sahlan' - `Welcome!' We are
ready for war ... This water
is ours.

Nasser had committed his nation to war. `Turning his
back on a whole decade of prudence,' Abba Eban has commented, `he
now uttered a courtly and exultant
welcome to the approaching war: "Ahlan
wa sahlan". It was as if he were greeting the unexpected appearance
of a beloved and long-­absent
guest.'

Israeli ships would no longer
be able to sail from Eilat into the Red Sea and
Indian Ocean. Yet this narrow waterway, Israel's commercial lifeline to
the east, had been
guaranteed by, among others, the United States, Canada, Britain and France.
The reaction of the guarantors was immediate, but far from unanimous
or clear-cut. French Foreign Ministry officials went so far as to intimate that
there were `judicial obscurities' about Israel's position. They
spoke, Abba Eban has written, as if
Ambassador Georges Picot's speech of
1 March 1957
- supporting
free Israeli maritime passage through the Straits of Tiran - `had
never been made', and in official talks ‘we had been asked if the economic value of our Red Sea outlet was
really enough to justify war.'

On
the morning of May 23 the Israeli Cabinet and military leaders were summoned to Tel
Aviv for an emergency meeting in the Ministry of Defence. As he drove down
from Jerusalem, Eban noted that those who greeted him from their cars, or from the roadside,
`managed to give their gestures an implication of anxiety'. Only a month earlier,
`the national mood had been as close to normalcy as could be expected
by a people born in war and nurtured
in siege. Now the crisis was upon us. As countryside and townships sped
past the window, I was gripped by a sharp awareness of the fragility of all cherished things. For the whole
of that day in Tel Aviv, and far into the
night in Jerusalem, our minds revolved around the question of survival;
so it must have been in ancient days, with Babylon
or Assyria at the gates.'

The
emergency meeting convened at nine that morning. There were, Eban
recalled, `no cheerful faces' around the table. Levi Eshkol had invited
the
leader of the Herut opposition, Menachem Begin, to be present, as well
as
the senior military trio, the Chief of Staff, Yitzhak Rabin, the Chief
of Operations, Ezer Weizman,
and the head of Military Intelligence, General Aharon
Yariv. Eshkol opened the meeting with a blunt and unemotional statement: `We have heard the news on the political
front. I don't know if you have
all heard it. It requires consultation and, probably, action as well.' Eban later commented, ‘The peril was taken
for granted; it stood in no need
of rhetorical adornment. The accent was placed on clarity of decision. A great doom was in the making and it seemed
to be coming on relentlessly.'

General
Yariv made his report. The Egyptian battle order in Sinai was not yet
complete. Although the airfields in Sinai were being made ready for combat, their
technical preparedness was `still deficient'. On the Jordan front, no
movement of troops had taken place towards the border. The Syrians were not making
moves of any particular military urgency. But in many of the cities of the
Arab world, vast crowds were demonstrating against Israel, calling for her
destruction. Eban recalled the mood of the meeting:

There was no doubt
that the howling mobs in Cairo, Damascus and Baghdad were seeing savage visions
of murder and booty. Israel, for its part,
had learned from Jewish history that no outrage against its men, women and children, was inconceivable. Many things
in Jewish history are too terrible to be believed, but nothing in that
history is too terrible to
have happened. Memories of the European slaughter were taking form and
substance in countless Israeli hearts. They flowed into our room
like turgid air and sat heavy on all our minds.Before my turn came to speak, I noticed that our military colleagues had made no proposals for immediate action.

Rabin was then asked for his opinion. In 1956, he pointed out, Egypt was
Israel's
only adversary. And Israel had been allied to two major powers. This time Israel would be alone, while Egypt might have
Syria, Jordan and contingents
from other Arab States fighting with her, as well as the full support of the Soviet Union. Rabin was confident
of military victory, but warned
that it would be `no walkover'. Ezer Weizman also spoke. `Our military advisers', recalled Eban, ‘could make no
comforting predictions about
the scale of Israeli losses. The candour of their words left a chilling
aftermath.'

Eban read out to the meeting a telegram from Washington, reporting a request
from the United States that Israel make no decision for war for forty­eight hours, to allow diplomacy to seek a way out
of the impasse. In addition, the
Cabinet was told, President Johnson `would take no responsibility for
actions on which he was not consulted'.

Rabin and Weizman agreed that Israel would lose no military advantage
by agreeing to a forty-eight-hour delay
before any decision for military action. No one at the meeting made any
proposal for an immediate military response. But it was agreed that the occupation by Egypt
of the
Straits of Tiran
should be considered by Israel an act of aggression, and that this should
be conveyed to all foreign governments. A formal statement, prepared by Eban,
represented the official Israeli stance. It read: `The Government of
Israel decides to give effect to the policy which it announced on 1 March 1957,
namely, to regard any interference with shipping as an aggressive act against which Israel
is entitled to exercise self defence.'

This left it open for Israel to take action as and when it chose, not
as an initiating act of war, but as the response
to the act of war by another.

There then began a flurry of international diplomatic activity aimed at
averting war. On May 24 - within
a few hours of the arrival at Cairo International Airport of an
armoured brigade from Kuwait, as a gesture of support
for Egypt - the Secretary-General
of the United Nations, U Thant, flew
from New York to the same airport to persuade Nasser not to commit his forces to war. Nasser would make no such commitment,
and on the following day U Thant
flew back to New York, his mission a failure.

On May 24 Abba Eban flew to Paris where President de Gaulle warned him that it would be ‘catastrophic' if
Israel were to attack first. The dispute must be resolved by the Four Powers, Britain,
the Soviet Union, the United States -
and France. `Don't shoot first.' When Eban pointed
out that in Israel's view the first act of war had already taken
place in Egypt's closing of the Straits of Tiran, de Gaulle refused to accept this.
He was upset, feeling that if Israel sought his advice, it ought
to take it. Opening hostilities meant, in his
view, firing the first shot. As for the pledge by Georges Picot that the
Straits of Tiran should be kept open, that, said de
Gaulle, `was correct juridically,
but 1967 was not 1957'. Picot's statement had reflected the `particular heat' of 1957.

From Paris, Eban flew to London. The Labour Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, took a far more pro-Israeli stance;
indeed, he seemed to delight in turning
his back on the traditional British Foreign Office reserve towards Israel.
The Cabinet had just met, and had decided, Wilson told Eban, `that the policy of blockade must not be allowed to triumph'.
Britain would work with other like-minded nations to open the Straits
of Tiran, and was already in
negotiations with the United States to find a common policy, and an effective one.

In the United States, the Israeli Ambassador, British-born Avraham Harman, went on May 24 to see former President
Eisenhower at his home in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. After the fighting in Sinai
in 1956 Eisenhower had
made a United States commitment to keep open the Straits of Tiran. Harman
was anxious that Eisenhower would continue to support that pledge, and do
so publicly, should President Johnson renew it. Eisenhower told Harman (as
Eban recounted in his memoirs), `that he was not accustomed to making statements, but if
asked by newspapermen, he would say that the Straits of Tiran was an international
waterway. This had been determined in 1957. He would repeat the
attitude which he and Secretary Dulles had then taken. He would add that
a violation of the rights of free passage would be illegal.' Eisenhower went on to tell
Harman, `His friends in
the Republican Party had already been in touch with him and he was going
to tell them exactly what he thought.' Eisenhower then strongly criticized the United Nations role in
recent weeks. Referring to U Thant's current conversations in Cairo, he
said that Nasser had created ‘an illegal position
and there should.be
no compromise with illegality'.

Eisenhower then asked Harman about the positions of France and Britain.
Reflecting on the past, he said that he
`still regretted that they had not taken steps of a concrete nature in the Suez
Canal similar to those which had been adopted with regard to the Straits of Tiran'.

On hearing Harman's report of a speech by President Johnson on May 23
in which he had condemned Egypt's blockade
as `illegal and fraught with danger', Eisenhower said that he hoped the President's
position `would be strongly
maintained'. He said that when he was President, `the Russians tended
to believe his strong statements because he had been a military man'.
Eisenhower then
told Harman, as his concluding words: `I do not believe that Israel will
be left alone.'

From
the Israeli perspective, all would depend on the attitude and actions
of the United States. As
Eban flew from London to New York during the morning
of May 25, President Johnson publicly denounced the blockade as `illegal'
and `potentially disastrous to the cause of peace'. That day, an even
more alarming development took place, as seen from
Jerusalem: Egyptian armoured
units crossed the Suez Canal and took up positions inside the Sinai. In Israel airfields had been put on high alert
in case of a surprise Egyptian
attack.

From all that Eban could gather, particularly after a late-night talk
with the American Secretary
of State, Dean Rusk -
who had spoken at length with President
Johnson - the United States was
prepared to take a strong stance in
Israel's favour. As Eban reported to Levi Eshkol in Jerusalem:

In
my view, the President was likely to discuss a programme for opening the
Straits by the maritime powers led by the United States, Britain and perhaps others. The plan in its present
form was based on the idea of a joint
declaration of maritime States, including Israel, concerning their resolve to exercise freedom of passage. The second
stage, according to what had
been said to us, would be the dispatch of a naval task force which would appear in the Straits.

Some
officials had predicted that the President would make a pledge that
the Straits would be opened, even if there was resistance. Some press reports were appearing in the
same sense. I told them that after my
talk with the President, I would fly home at once and bring the thoughts
of the United States government to the knowledge of my colleagues;
in the meantime, I had no authority to define any attitude during
the present short visit. My efforts were limited to inducing them to make their proposals in the fullest detail, including
a timetable and a method of carrying out any plan, so that our
government should be able to determine
its attitude one way or the other.

I
had emphasized that in the absence of an immediate plan for opening
the Straits, there would, in my opinion, be no escape from an explosion. Since
their plan included a certain reliance on the United Nations, I expressed
a deeply sceptical appraisal of its effectiveness.

On the evening of May 26, Eban saw President Johnson, who started the
conversation with the words, `I am not a
mouse from Washington, I am a lion from Texas.' Once it became apparent,
Johnson said, that the United Nations could not keep the Straits of Tiran open `then
it is going to be up to
Israel and all of its friends, and all those who feel that an injustice
has been
done, and all those who give some indication of what they are prepared
to
do, and the United States would do likewise. The United States has had
some experience
in seeking support of friendly states, but Israel should put its embassies
to work to get support from all those concerned with keeping the waterway open. The British are
willing and the United States is trying to formulate a plan with them.'

Meanwhile,
the President added, it would be `unwise' of Israel to `jump the
gun'. He stressed this point
by repeating three times during the course of his conversation with Eban: `Israel will not be
alone unless it decides to go
alone.' It was also the point stressed by the note which Johnson then
handed to Eban, setting out the position of the United
States. The note was short, and blunt. Regarding the Straits of
Tiran, it read, `we plan to pursue vigorously
the measures which can be taken by maritime nations to assure that the Straits and the Gulf remain open to free
and innocent passage of all nations.
I must emphasize the necessity for Israel not to make itself responsible
for the initiation of hostilities. Israel will not be alone unless it
decides to do it alone. We cannot imagine that Israel
will make this decision.'

Eban prepared to leave the White House, with this mixed message. The United States would work to reopen the Straits
of Tiran, but it did not want Israel to take unilateral action, despite Israel's argument
(which Eban had made
to Johnson, as to de Gaulle) that it regarded the closure of the Straits
in
itself as an act of war. As Eban and Johnson walked out of the Oval Office,
Eban asked him: `Again, Mr President, can I tell my Cabinet that you will
use every measure in
your power to ensure that the Gulf and Straits are open for Israeli shipping?'
`Yes', replied Johnson. Eban recounted, `He shook my hand with such a
paralysing grip that I doubted that I would ever regain the use of it.'

While the diplomats,
Presidents and Prime Ministers took up their respective positions, Nasser was raising the temperature
of the crisis. `The battle will
be a general one,' he declared on May 26, `and our basic objective will be to destroy Israel. I probably could not have
said such things five or even
three years go. Today I say such things because I am confident.' In the
Security Council the Soviet Union made it clear that
it would veto any proposal that
might not be in accord with the wishes of Egypt or Syria. Flying from
Moscow to Cairo, the newly appointed Soviet Minister of Defence, Marshal Grechko, brought Nasser a personal message
of encouragement from the Soviet Head of State, Alexei Kosygin.

Nasser was
confident of a military victory that would end the existence of Israel. Golda Meir, reflecting on her efforts after 1956
to convince the Americans
that Israel would be in danger if it withdrew from Sinai, later asked in anguish,
`Why had it seemed so simple and so obvious to us but so impossible of
attainment to everyone else? Hadn't we explained the realities of life in our part of the world
properly? Had I made some dreadful mistake or left something crucial unsaid?
The more I thought about those months of 1956 and 1957, the more apparent it became to
me now that nothing
at all had changed since then and that the Arabs were once again being permitted
to delude themselves that they could wipe us off the face of the earth.'This was not merely
an Israeli perspective. Following Nasser's speech of May 26, one of his
close allies, Mohammed Heykal, wrote in the Cairo newspaper Al-Ahramthat
an armed clash between Israel and Egypt was `inevitable'. It would come because of the
inexorable logic of the situation:

Egypt
has exercised its power and achieved the objectives at this stage without
resorting to arms so far. But Israel has no alternative but to use arms
if it wants to exercise power. This means that the logic of the fearful
confrontation
now taking place between Egypt, which is fortified by the might of the masses
of the Arab nation, and Israel, which is fortified by the illusion of
American might, dictates that Egypt, after all it has now succeeded in achieving,
must wait, even though it has to wait for a blow.Let Israel begin;
let our second blow then be ready. Let it be a knockout.

The
Israeli War Cabinet met on May 27 to decide whether or not to take military action against
Egypt, using the continued closure of the Straits of Tiran
as the reason. The delay requested by the United States to enable diplomacy to work had gone by. In Israel's own inner
counsels, a short but intense
period of doubt by Yitzhak Rabin had passed. Rabin had regained his confidence that Israel could be successful on
the battlefield without a long
period of bloodletting.

As
the discussion around the Cabinet table continued, it became clear that
the
Israeli Ministers were evenly divided. No head count was taken, but it
seemed that about nine Ministers favoured
immediate military action against Egypt, and about nine were keen that
the process of international diplomacy should
be allowed to continue. Eban, who had just arrived from the UnitedStates - he
was driven straight from the airport to the Cabinet Room - proposed a forty-eight-hour `disengagement', after
which Ministers should meet again
and decide on military action or further diplomacy. Levi Eshkol suggested a much shorter pause - enough for Ministers to sleep for the rest of the night, and to reassemble the following afternoon.

The
new situation which confronted the Israeli Ministers when they reassembled on May
28 was an apparent strengthening of the resolve of the United States
to reopen the Straits of Tiran. The American Ambassador to Israel, Walworth
Barbour, passed on the information that the United States and Britain were
even then looking into the military and naval aspects of an international naval
task force (which later came to be known as the `international flotilla'), in which British and American
warships would play a major part. Harold
Wilson had been particularly emphatic on British participation,
having just made a visit to Canada to enlist wider support. The Canadian
and the Dutch governments had both agreed to join in such a force.The sense of foreign support at this level of seriousness influenced the
Israeli Cabinet not to decide on immediate military
action. Levi Eshkol proposed
a two-week pause, to see what the multinational naval task force could do, assuming that it came into being. The
thought of such a long period before
Israel initiated action was appealing to most - indeed to almost all - the Ministers. Abba Eban has recalled how
`the expectation of victory was overshadowed
by fear of terrible casualties'. Zalman Aranne, the Minister of Education, `had spoken eloquently' - Eban wrote -'of the fearful toll of war and of the
moral need to do everything possible to avoid it. He was a man of refined
consciousness and strong individualism. He was always, more likely than anyone to give utterance to feelings
which other Ministers held discreetly
in their hearts. The Minister of the Interior, Moshe Shapira, was in consultation with Ben-Gurion, who also thought that
a military challenge by Israel
without allies by her side would be exorbitant on blood.'

Only one Minister, Moshe Carmel, the Minister of Transport, argued in
favour of an immediate Israeli attack at
the Cabinet meeting of May 28. His worry was that with every day that passed
the Egyptians would be in a stronger position to launch a surprise attack.

The decision to wait beyond May 28 was not understood by some of the Israeli public, estimated at 24 per cent,
who felt too endangered to wait any longer, and had no faith in international
- or
United States - support. The
memories of America's hostility in 1956 were still
vivid. Moshe Shapira later defended
the decision to delay in the following words:

If
the war came it was essential that Lyndon Johnson should not be against us. If
we had not waited we would still have conquered in the field of battle; but we would have
lost in the political arena. The United States would not have stood by
our side in the way that she did. We must remember that the general mood in those days was
that we could not
reasonably expect the emphatic victory which ensued.

I
said then and it is clear to me today that if we had begun war too early,
we would have shown a lack of responsibility for our future. This has now been proved. The United States
is giving us support such as we have
never known before. I believe that a Superior Force directs our history. There is a destiny that shapes our ends.

Eban,
who was later criticized for having pushed the argument for delay, wrote in his defence, and that of Eshkol,
that both men were `using time as currency
to secure ultimate political support'. It was the American hostility in 1956 that weighed on both men, and on many of their
colleagues. Johnson's support
for a naval initiative could not be allowed to be nipped in the bud. As Eban later wrote:

Either
the multilateral naval action would collapse, in which case the United
States would have little right or cause to restrain Israel's independent action,
or if it succeeded, Nasser would, for the first time, believe that Israel
had political backing as well as military strength. We must remember that
our only aims in the Egyptian context were to break the blockade and disperse the troop
concentrations.

The
idea of a new boundary for Israel was not in the air at the end of
May; it was only later that the Jordanian and Syrian interventions brought the whole Arab-Israel territorial
structure under question. To defeat
Nasser's blockade and troop concentrations in May by a combination
of military preparedness and political pressures would be no less honourable, and in the long run, no less
significant than to bring him
low by an actual trial of strength.

The seventeen Ministers
who supported the delay were `dominated', Eban added, not by "confusion" or panic but by
a mature political calculation'.

Immediately after the Cabinet meeting Eshkol saw the military leaders.
He was accompanied, and supported, by Yigal
Allon, then Minister of Labour. Some of the army men expressed their fears
that unless Israel took military action at once, Egypt would secure the advantage.
They were confident of success only if the Egyptians were attacked at once. Eshkol
told them, bluntly,
`You are exaggerating quite a lot.' This was also Eban's view. `Our military
advisers were now fervent in the promise of victory,' he later wrote.
`True,
their buoyancy was somewhat deflated by the contrary thesis that a brief delay would
convert certain triumph to certain ruin. To me it seemed unlikely that we
could be assured of utter victory if we acted on May 28 - and
of complete rout if we waited a few days.'

That evening, immediately after the seven o'clock news, the Israel Broadcasting
Service, transmitted the first of what were to be sixteen daily commentaries by General Chaim Herzog. It was hoped
that these com­mentaries would
help to calm the public mind, and they did so. In his first broadcast, Herzog stressed the problems facing Nasser
in trying to hold the vastness
of the Sinai, should Israel be `called upon to react to an Egyptian attack'. Herzog told his listeners, if one takes
into consideration the strength and
preparedness of the Israel Defence Forces, the Egyptian commander has his problems.' These were morale-boosting words.
They were badly needed.

Starting on May 29, there came a period known in Israel as the hamtana (waiting). Without that waiting period,
Yitzhak Rabin later wrote, `it is doubt­ful if Israel would have been able to hold
firm at the cease-fire lines and in the political arena two years after the
war.' At the time, however, it was not the eventual political advantage, but the daily fears
and anxieties that domi­nated
the politicians and the people. On May 29 Nasser spoke to the members
of the Egyptian National Assembly. `The issue is not the question of Akaba, the
Straits of Tiran or the United Nations Emergency Force,' he said. `The issue
is the aggression against Palestine that took place in 1948.'

In 1948, Nasser insisted, Israeli `aggression' had been carried out with
the `collaboration'
of Britain and the United States. It was Britain and the United States who now
wanted to `confine' the issue to the Straits of Tiran, the United Nations Emergency
Force, and the right of passage through the Gulf of Akaba. But, Nasser
declared, We are not afraid of the United States andits
threats, of Britain and its threats, or of the entire Western world and
its partiality to Israel.'In fact, the multinational naval
force which the United States and Britain had hoped to assemble was not
coming into being. Even Britain, which was so keen on it, discovered - to Harold Wilson's mortification - that there were no British warships near enough to
reach the area for several days. Instead of concerted naval action to end Egypt's blockade, a coalition of a different
sort was being created. On the
day after Nasser's speech of May 29, King Hussein of Jordan flew
to Cairo. In explanation of his journey, the King later wrote, The desire to meet Nasser may seem strange when one remembers the insulting, defamatory words which for a whole
year the Cairo radio had launched against the Hashemite monarchy; but
from every point of view we had
no right nor could we decently justify a decision to stand aside in a
cause in which the entire Arab world was determined
unanimously to engage itself.'

At the meeting, Nasser produced a file containing the Syrian-Egyptian
defence pact which had been signed a month
earlier. `I was so anxious to reach an agreement,' the King later wrote, `that I contented
myself with a rapid perusal of the text and said to Nasser, "Give
me another copy; let us replace
the word Syria by the word Jordan and the matter will be arranged.'

Israel
was suddenly confronted by the possibility of a war on two fronts - or, if Syria were to honour its pact with Egypt and
join in, by a war on three fronts. On
May 31, the day after the Egyptian Jordanian
pact was signed, troops from Iraq reached Egypt, eager to
join the battle. In Israel, it became
clear that the two-week respite on which the Cabinet had agreed three days earlier was probably drawing to a premature
close. There was an added dimension
of danger, and fear, in Israel when Ahmed Shukeiry, the commander
of the Palestine Liberation Organization - whose
headquarters was in Cairo -
flew back to Amman with King Hussein, at Nasser's
insistence, and then appeared
in Jordanian East Jerusalem to breathe fire and death against Israel.
After the Arab victory, he said, those Israelis who had been born elsewhere would be `repatriated'. When he was reminded that more than half of the Israeli population had been born
in Palestine and (after 1948) Israel, he replied, `Those who survive will
remain in Palestine, but I estimate that
none of them will survive.'

From Cairo came a further ominous threat: `The occupation of the Israelis
of
the harbour of Eilat was illegal.' This was a clear intimation that Egyptian
forces, already stationed within a few miles of Eilat,
at the Taba border post, intended
to occupy Eilat itself, Israel's southernmost town.

There remained the Anglo-American
search for an international naval task force to reopen the Straits of Tiran. Eighty countries
were asked to support this action,
but only two - Canada and Denmark
- were willing to do so without equivocation. From Washington, Avraham Harman
reported that President Johnson
`could see no way out of the crisis'. Five days earlier,Johnson had urged Israel, in no uncertain terms, not to fire the
first shot. But on June 1 the Secretary
of State, Dean Rusk, when asked if the United States would take measures to restrain Israel from precipitate action, replied,
`I don't think it is our business to restrain anybody.'

During June 1 the mood in Israeli government circles was changing. If
the United States was no longer seeking to restrain Israel, then perhaps
the time had come to take
the military initiative. This was the view of many of those whose temperament
was for conciliation and diplomacy, men like Arthur Lourie, one of
Eban's advisers at the Foreign Office. Eban, who had initially proposed the two-week
pause, felt strongly that there ought not to be any further delay. In
his memoirs he wrote, of the turning point for him on June 1:

I
went to the Dan Hotel for a conversation with the most intimate of my
advisers, Arthur Lourie, who urged me strongly along the course which
I was contemplating. Both of us thought that the hour was now ripe to
pick
up the fruits of our patient efforts of the past ten days.

I returned to our Tel Aviv office and asked the Director-General, Aryeh
Levavi, to accompany me across the lawn to a meeting with the Chief of Staff, General Rabin, and the chief of military
intelligence, General
Yariv. I told them that I no longer had any political inhibitions to such military
resistance as was deemed feasible, necessary and effective, and that if we were
successful, I believed that our political prospects were good. We would not be set
upon by a united and angry world
as in 1956.

Eban's account continued, it took but a few sentences for me to say to
the two generals what was on my mind.
I told them, without specific details, that I believed the waiting period had achieved
its political purpose; that its advantage would unfold in the coming days
and weeks; that there was nothing
now for which to wait; that the need to withstand the throttling grip
of
Arab aggression was paramount; and that any decision on methods and timing should now
be reached on military grounds alone.'

Eban, Levavi, Rabin and Yariv then discussed `possible times and occasions' when Israel might strike, `all
of them close at hand, at which Egyptian pressure would invite total response'. The meeting
over, Eban left the
generals' room and returned across the lawn towards the Foreign Office
building. `My step was lighter than when I had entered,' he later wrote.

Levi Eshkol was waiting on the lawn. When Eban told him that he had told the generals that the next step must
be taken and timed on military grounds alone, Eshkol's `relief - Eban
has recorded -'was unconcealed'.

The mood in Israel was one of grim determination. Golda Meir has recalled how, at the same time that the
soldiers were mobilized, the over­age men and women and children of Israel buckled down
to clean out basements and cellars
for use as makeshift air-raid shelters, to fill thousands of sandbags with which to line the pathetic home-made
trenches that fathers and grandfathers
dug in every garden and schoolyard throughout the country and to take over the essential chores of
civilian life, while the troops waited,
under camouflage nets in the sands of the Negev - waited, trained and went on waiting. It was as though some gigantic clock were clicking
away for all of us, though no one except Nasser knew
when the zero hour would be.'
Golda Meir's recollection continued:

By
the end of May, ordinary life - as we had known it in the previous montbs - came
to an end. Each day seemed to contain double the normal number of hours, and each hour seemed endless.

In the heat of the early summer,
I did what everyone else was doing: I packed a little
overnight bag with a few essential belongings that might be needed in the shelter and put it where it could most
easily be grabbed as
soon as the sirens started to wail. I helped Aya make identification discs out of oilcloth for the children to wear and
blacked out one room in each
house so that we could put on the light somewhere in the evenings. I went to Revivim one day to see Sarah and
the children. I watched the
kibbutz that I had known from its first day calmly prepare itself for the Arab onslaught that might turn it
into rubble, and he met with
some of Sarah's friends - at
their request - to talk about
what might happen. But what they really wanted to know was when
the waiting would end, and that
was a question I couldn't answer. So the clock ticked on, and we waited and waited.

There were also the grim preparations
that had to be kept secret: the parks in each
city that had been consecrated for possible use as mass cemeteries; the hotels cleared of guests so that they
could be turned into huge emergency first-aid stations; the iron rations
stockpiled against the time when the population might have to be
fed from some central source; the bandages, drugs, and stretchers obtained
and distributed.

And, of course, above all, there
were the military preparations, because even though we had by now absorbed
that fact that we were entirely on
our own, there wasn't a single person in Israel, as far as I know, who had any illusions about the fact that
there was no alternative whatsoever
to winning the war that was being thrust upon us.

When I think back
to those days, what stands out in my mind is the miraculous sense of unity
and purpose that transformed us within only a
week or two from a small, rather claustrophobic community, coping -
and not always well - with all sorts of economic, political and social
discontents into two and a half million Jews, each
and every one of whom felt personally responsible for the survival
of the State of Israel
and
each and every one of whom knew that the enemy we faced was committed
to our annihilation.

Inside Israel distress at the apparent inability of the government to
take a decision had spread throughout the
society. Public trust in the government was at its lowest ebb. The tens of thousands
of reservists who had been called up felt that there was no leader.
There was a growing public call for Moshe
Dayan, a former and highly regarded Chief of Staff, to be brought back to serve at the highest level. Eshkol was ready
to appoint him Commander of the
Southern Front, facing Egypt.

This was not enough for those demanding a clear lead. There were large
public
demonstrations demanding that Eshkol give Dayan his Ministry of Defence portfolio. Among the demonstrations calling
for change was a women's march
in Tel Aviv. Most of the marchers were the wives of reserve officers (they quickly became known, in an unusual
moment of whimsy during such worrying times, as the Merry Wives
of Windsor). Eshkol bowed to the storm
and the Cabinet that he then created was one that reflected the public mood and the coming emergency.

The national unity government, the first in Israel's history, was a historic
turning point, a consequence of the public
trauma of the impending war. Menachem
Begin - head of
the Herut opposition - was brought into the government as Minister without Portfolio. The ten-member Rafi Party, which
had broken away from Mapai two years earlier as a result of the Lavon
affair, and been in opposition
since then, returned to the government, enabling Moshe Dayan to be made Minister of Defence.

On the first evening of his appointment, Moshe Dayan asked the Chief of
Staff, Yitzhak Rabin, and the General Officer
Commanding Southern Command, Brigadier-General Yeshayahu Gavish (known
in the army as Shaike)
to present their war plans. The two men were the authors of two very different plans.
Rabin had for more than two years been the advocate of a limited war, with Israel restricting
its aim to the conquest of the Gaza Strip
and using the Strip as a bargaining counter to force Egypt to re-open
the Straits of Tiran. Gavish had devised a more ambitious
plan, to strike deep into Sinai
and to attack and defeat the Egyptian forces there.

As Dayan faced the two generals, Rabin asked Gavish to explain `the plan'
to the new Minister. `Which plan?' asked
Gavish, assuming that Rabin would press his own more limited scheme. `The
second', was Rabin's reply. He had opted for Gavish's more ambitious project.
Dayan gave it his approval.

After the
seven o'clock news on June 1, the Israel Broadcasting Service transmitted the fifth daily commentary by
General Herzog. `Obviously every precaution must be taken,' Herzog told his listeners - who
were fearful of an
Egyptian air bombardment -'but I must say in all sincerity that if I had
to
choose today between flying an Egyptian bomber bound for Tel Aviv, or
being in Tel Aviv,
I would out of a purely selfish desire for self-preservation, opt to be in Tel
Aviv.' Rabin later wrote of the importance of these words, their content and
their tone, spoken as they were `when hundreds of thousands of mothers in Israel were
engaged in pasting protective strips of paper or material on windows, and when their
children were busy digging slit trenches in the backyards.'

From
Cairo, Nasser continued to exacerbate the situation by his public declarations. On
June 2, as a threat to the Anglo-American efforts to create a naval task force,
he warned, If any Power dares to make declarations on freedom of navigation in the Straits
of Tiran, we shall deny that Power oil and
free navigation in the Suez Canal.'

Israel's military position was, on paper, precarious. On the Egyptian
front at least 100,000 troops and 900 tanks were deployed in Sinai. On
the Golan Heights
Syria had more than 75,000 men and 400 tanks ready for action. The Jordanians had 32,000 men under arms, and almost
300 tanks. This made a total force of 207,000 soldiers and at least 1,600
tanks. A further 150 tanks were
moving into Jordan from Iraq, which was determined to join what was being called in the Arab world `the final battle'.
Should it become necessary Egypt
was able to send from the west of Sinai a further 140,000 troops and 300 tanks into that battle.

Against this substantial Arab force, Israel had, with the full mobilization
of the civilian reserves, 264,000 soldiers
and 800 tanks. An estimated 700 Arab combat aircraft were also ready for action. Israel
had only 300.

During a meeting at the Foreign Ministry on June 2, Eban told his officials
that
it was his reading of American policy that `if we were successful, the
United States would feel relieved at being liberated
from its dilemma, and would
not support international pressures against us'.

Moshe
Dayan spent most of Saturday June 3 preparing Israel's war plan. There was no possibility of a traditional
Sabbath day of rest for him, his planners
or his commanders. And yet, as is the nature of the Sabbath in Israel, the day of rest imposed its own characteristics.
`The beaches and the picnic grounds', Eban has written, `were crowded
with officers back on short leave from
the front.' This was a deliberate ruse to mislead the Egyptians with regard to the imminent Israeli attack.

During the
Sabbath the Israeli Ambassador to Washington, Avraham Harman, flew back
to Israel. Driving straight from the airport to Eban's official residence
in Jerusalem, Harman reported on his most recent conversation
- the
previous day - with Secretary of State Dean Rusk. From what Rusk had told him, it was clear that there was
`even less international disposition'
to act against Nasser than there had been a few days earlier. The most that could be expected was a Vice-Presidential
visit to Cairo. Rusk had told Harman that measures to be taken
against Egypt by the maritime powers were
still under consideration, but that `nothing has been firmly decided'.This, Eban noted, was `a far cry' from Rusk's own statement five
days earlier through the American Ambassador
to Israel, that the military preparations of the maritime powers had `reached an advanced stage'.

That evening Eban took Harman with him to see Eshkol. An impressive trio
of former generals was also there: Dayan, Yadin and Allon, as well as
several other senior officers. Unanimity prevailed as to the position
of the United
States. Harman's `realistic report', as Eban described it, `strengthened
our certainty that there was nothing for us to expect
from outside' - unlike the
Anglo-French cooperation in 1956. `It was now clear,' Eban recalled, `that
the United States was not going to be able to involve itself unilaterally
or multilaterally in any enforcement action within a
period relevant to our plight.
But we all felt that if Israel found a means of breaking out of the siege
and blockade, the United States would not now take
a hostile position.'

Those meeting at Eshkol's house were also clear, Eban wrote, that Israel's
military plan was `concerned with Egypt
alone; we would not fight against Jordan unless Jordan attacked us'. The meeting then dispersed.
`As I walked the
short distance to my residence in the still night,' Eban wrote, `I came
across
groups of workers building shelters near the schools. In conformity with
the general mood, my wife, son and daughter had put sticking tape inside the windows
of our home, as protection against explosions. Everyone in Jerusalem was
doing this, but I had to ask my long-suffering family to spend some hours
peeling the tape away since television teams were going to arrive to record
interviews with me: I thought that visible evidence of defence preparations
in the Foreign Minister's own house would give too sharp a hint of
impending war.'

On the following morning, Sunday June 4, the national unity Cabinet met,
presided over by Eshkol. For seven
hours Dayan set out his military proposals.
`The atmosphere was now strangely tranquil,' Eban has written. `All the
alternatives had been weighed and tested in recent days; there was little remaining to do except plunge into the responsibility
and hazard of choice.' The most
frightening factor was the information reaching Israel of the mood in Egypt and throughout the Arab- world.
There were reports, Eban recalled,
which made clear there was `a higher morale than the Arab world had known in all our experience', and he went on to
explain, `The frenzy in the
Arab streets belonged to the tradition of hot fanaticism which, in earlier
periods of history, had sent the Moslem armies flowing
murderously across three continents.
Reports were reaching us of Egyptian generals and other leaders straining
hard against the tactical leash which Nasser had imposed upon them. His idea of absorbing the first blow and
inflicting a "knockout" in
the second round was receding before a simpler impulse which told Egyptian troops that a first-blow victory was possible
and that there was no need to
"absorb" anything.'

That the Arab `street' was
clamouring, and eager, for war was clear. Dayan then
presented his war plan. Israel could win a war, he told his ministerial
colleagues, if
it were to embark on it sooner rather than later. Every day saw the Arab forces
gaining in strength and readiness. For Israel, the `optimum moment' had
arrived. He had one, overriding request: that he be allowed to send the army into
battle at a time to be chosen secretly by himself and Eshkol. When Eshkol
asked the Cabinet for a show of hands, there was no dissent.

After the Cabinet broke up, Dayan saw Eshkol alone. The time he proposed to launch an Israeli attack was,
Dayan said, 7.45 the next morning, Monday June 5. Eshkol agreed. Israel would
take the military initiative against those who were threatening her annihilation.

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